


Trees

by dizzy



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-04-18
Updated: 2003-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-04 14:14:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3071171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Isn't there already a BB/DM fic named Trees? Or am I going crazy? Well, I'm feeling entirely unoriginal, so I think I'll just leave it, anyway.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Trees

**Author's Note:**

> Isn't there already a BB/DM fic named Trees? Or am I going crazy? Well, I'm feeling entirely unoriginal, so I think I'll just leave it, anyway.

Dom likes the trees in New Zealand.

This isn't something new. Dom has always liked trees. But the ones in New Zealand are special to him - they seem... more. Taller, more confident, older, and wiser. He sees trees as being wise. He likes the idea of Treebeard and the Ents. He likes that Merry and Pippin are the ones that meet Treebeard. He's proud of it, like it's a personal accomplishment, that he gets to work with Treebeard. Even if there isn't a really a Treebeard - on the movie screen there is, and he can let reality and fantasy twine together just long enough for Treebeard to be _real_ and just as ancient and wise as Tolkein wrote him to be.

If Treebeard were a real, Dom thinks, he would have been like the trees in New Zealand. Magical. Mysterious. Different.

When Billy comes looking for Dom, he's not surprised to find him up a tree. He stands on the ground, looking up, shaking his head and shielding his eyes from the sun. He can't possibly imagine how Dom found his way up this tree, all the way up, perched at least a dozen feet above Billy, grinning down at him.

"Come on up," Dom says. One of his hands is balanced on the limb, the other is pressing against the tree itself.

"You come down." Billy says.

This is an old game. Billy doesn't climb trees. Dom thinks, one day he'll make Billy climb a tree. One day.

Billy leans against the trunk, head tilted back. They will talk until Dom is ready to get down, when he magically appears beside Billy, feet hitting the ground with a thud but remaining upright, something Billy doubts that he could do. Takes practice, Dom tells him, jumping out of a tree. There's a method to it. Something you have to master.

Billy says he'll stick to surfing. Dom tells him that he doesn't know what he's missing. And he stays up in the tree.

Dom wishes that for once, the situation would be reversed. He'd like to look up at Billy, instead of down. Just to see what Billy sees.

Or that Billy would be up there beside him. He picture it in his mind - a picture that comes easily, something lingering at the surface of his thoughts - a grinning Billy with his feet dangling over a limb, leaning in to touch his mouth to Dom's.

Dom feels a sting, that dangerous shard of pleasure/guilt that you get when you know you're thinking something that you shouldn't be thinking. But he still thinks it, and with growing regularity.

No, no, he remembers his fourth grade teacher telling him. Lads don't kiss lads, it's unnatural. He remembers the boy he'd been snogging - innocent, chaste snogging, but snogging none the less. Sandy blonde hair and pouty lips, tasting like ice cream, a ten year old picture of demonic perfection. The name refuses to come to him, but the face - yes, he knows the face, because the memory stands out so. His first kiss. The first time he _knew_.

His parents worried. His teachers told him to be ashamed. He learned to hide it well, learned early on that he had no choice if he wanted to live a semi-normal life.

He can't remember when he started hiding in the trees, but it because a refuge. There was one his backyard - much too high and large to climb, but with thick roots that stood out from the ground, perfect for sinking back into. The trees hid him, they protected him. They kept his secrets. His childhood is a mixture of confusion and pain, with little droplets of happiness raining in from the most unusual directions. It got easier, as he got older. But he still liked the idea of it - of the trees, of knowing that a tree would hold him up and support him and never tire of his company.

"Dommie." Billy says, a tired warning that he's growing tired of waiting. Dom is still in the tree. "Let's go. We can watch a movie. I'll make dinner."

Dinner and a movie. Dom's hand tightens around the sturdy branch that he's sitting on. Something in him tightens. "What movie?" He's an actor. He acts well. It suits him, acting. He never would have thought, as a boy, that the guilty thing he forced himself to do with other people would turn into _this_ , this career, this thing, this life. It was fun, acting, when you knew that you didn't _have_ to do it.

"Anything. Just come on. It'll be dark soon."

Dom kicks a leg out in front of him. He drops to the ground, only stumbling a bit. Billy's sitting on the ground. He looks up at Dom, no longer needing to be careful of the sun, because it's already started it's descent and is no longer a threat to his vision.

Billy grabs his hand and pulls him down. Dom sits right there, where he was standing, but then moves in closer. A root, he tells himself, a root digging into his backside. Nothing at all to do with wanting to be closer to Billy.

Billy's a co-worker. Billy's a mate. Billy's his best mate. But Billy's not a sure thing, Billy isn't unconditional, or if he is, Dom doesn't know it yet, and he can't take that chance.

"Thought you wanted to go."

Billy shrugs. "Just wanted to get you down here. It's hard, talking when you're all the way up there."

"Ah, well." Dom says. "I like it up there."

"I've noticed. Why is that?"

Dom isn't at a loss for words - he has plenty of them - but he is at a loss for what to say to Billy. Nothing too deep, nothing to personal. Let's not scare the pretty little Scot away, eh, Dominic? "It's peaceful." He says. Honesty, but the bare minimum.

What else can he say?

"The leaves smell good."

What is that expression on Billy's face? Does it say 'Dominic is a weirdo freak?'

Hmm. Not exactly. "They do." A statement, not a question.

"Dom." Billy is half smiling. And the thought peirces Dom again, a pang of wanting that's so hard and so unexpected that it hurts. Kissing Billy. Kissing Billy, and not feeling guilty. And there is Billy, smiling now, really smiling, and tilting his head at such an angle...

... and Dom knows that he should have stayed in the tree, safe up there in the tree, where Billy won't ever be because Billy doesn't climb trees, and if Billy isn't there, Billy can't tiled his head just so and smile just so and Dom won't be so damned tempted and Dom won't...

... won't kiss Billy, like he's kissing him now, won't have his hand covering Billy's and his tongue brushing against Billy's lower lip, won't taste butterscotch and chocolate in Billy's mouth and feel slick, hardness of teeth and know the gasp, gasping breath in his mouth, pulling...

... pulling back, pulling away, and if Dom had stayed in the tree, he won't have kissed Billy, won't know the utterly miserable rush of rejection, Billy, pulling away, Billy - not wanting him. Not. Wanting.

Dom doesn't know quite how he got to his feet, only the feeling of his hand rough, sliding upwards on the tree, bracing himself and with a gulping breath, running away, running when he should be walking, weakening when he needs to show strenth. Breaking when he shouldn't even bend.

When he gets to the car, he realizes that he and Billy came together and he can't very well leave Billy here, and even if he could, well, he _can't_ because Billy has the keys and Billy must know this, even though he's not following.

Dom waits. He waits and waits and waits but Billy doesn't come walking out of the forest and Dom's too afraid to walk back in, even though he knows exactly which tree he left Billy sitting under. He's afraid, but eventually he has to, because it's already dark outside and they have to go home eventually, awkward or not, hurt or not.

He finds the tree. The one that he likes so much, because it's just the right height and just easy enough to climb and, well, is just his favorite. He finds the tree, but he doesn't find Billy, because Billy isn't there.

He leans against the tree and waits. Billy can't have gone very far. He'll just wait. He can wait. Really, he can. It won't drive him crazy. It won't-

And then he feels it. A leaf, falling so close to him that it brushes against his cheek. And then another, just as close, and another, until he looks up, right above his head, and he can just barely make out a shape against the inky, starless black of the night.

"Billy?" He calls out. Another leaf, falling onto the top of his head.

"Dommie." Billy's voice is like music, soft and gentle and saying so much without saying anything at all. "It's nice up here. Why don't you come up?"

Dom is grinning now, because it's Billy, in a tree, in a tree in a forest in New Zealand. Billy who doesn't climb trees, sitting high up in Dom's favorite tree.


End file.
